Composites are made up from individual laminas bonded together at a certain temperature in a single consolidated laminate. Each layer is composed of a mixture of fibers and resin. The resin flows within and between the laminas before getting to its curing temperature.
Composite laminates are used extensively in the aeronautical industry as well as in other industries.
In conventional manufacturing processes, the components of a composite structure are manufactured independently and subsequently joined or assembled to reach the final structure.
Three types of techniques are available to get a final composite structure without using rivets as joining elements of its components: co-curing un-cured components, co-bonding cured components with un-cured components and bonding cured components between them (secondary bonding).
The co-curing technique is the best from a structural point of view but requires a complicate tooling for handling the assembly of un-cured components.
A known approach to solve this problem is using partially cured composite components because they can be better handled than fully un-cured components. In a known method to produce panels with two curing areas a composite layup is placed in a two chamber mold between four semi-rigid membranes and then, while vacuum is applied to the layup, temperature and pressure is exerted to the layup by fluids introduced into the chambers (see the Australian Quickstep website for further information).
A disadvantage of that method for, particularly, manufacturing partially cured large composite components is the complexity and cost of the tooling required.
The present invention is directed to the solution of said drawback.